This invention relates to electronic musical instruments, and more particularly relates to such instruments capable of providing an accompaniment to a melody played by a performer.
Electronic musical instruments, such as keyboard-controlled electronic organs, have experienced wide acceptance among musicians. Since many of these instruments are sold to amateurs, manufacturers have placed special emphasis on the ease of playing and on the variety of voices (i.e., sound qualities or timbres) available to the performer. In particular, the electronic musical instrument industry has long sought a method of producing a full orchestral accompaniment which can be controlled easily by a performer of limited skill or musical knowledge.
Past attempts in this direction have met with only limited success. For example, it is possible to play a complete accompaniment chord on some instruments (e.g., chord organs) by pressing only one key. The drone of such instruments may sound good to the novice, but it soon becomes monotonous. The drone of the chord organs has been reduced somewhat by a variety of rhythm devices consisting of synthetically created drum, brush and cymbal sounds which are selectively gated on and off in accordance with a rhythm clock. Bass tones consisting of a root note, a fifth, or similar elementary harmonic structures, have been generated by prior rhythm devices, but they have not relieved the monotony inherent in such devices. Other instruments, such as the Yamaha Model E-70 electronic organ, gate solid pitched chords on and off with a rhythm clock and simultaneously generate a running base line which keys a variety of pitches on and off with the rhythm clock. The solid chords sound in the registration selected on a lower keyboard manual and the bass line sounds in the registration selected on the pedal board. For any given chord selected by the performer, the gated chords remain the same and the melodic pattern of the base line remains the same during a prescribed musical segment of about two measures.
More recent instruments such as the Lowrey Model D-325, key a melody line and a running bass line on and off with a rhythm clock. Solid chords also can be controlled by the same rhythm clock. The solids chords and melody line sound in selectable registration and the bass line sounds in another selectable registration.
There have been attempts to synthesize music on a digital computer. For example, the May, 1961 Bell System Technical Journal contains a description by Max V. Mathews of "An Acoustic Compiler For Music And Psychological Stimuli". A related device was developed at Dartmouth College and is described in a May, 1975 paper by Paul Tobias entitled, "An Introduction To The Dartmouth Music Language". Such music synthesizers are able to simulate orchestral affects to a greater extent than the instruments described above. However, it is believed that no one has been able to incorporate such synthesizers into a performing instrument capable of responding to the touch of a performing musician.
Although the foregoing devices are a step in the right direction, the resulting sound does not compare with the results obtained when a skilled organist plays an instrument by adding correct counterpoint, countermelody, variable rhythm patterns and other embellishments that only a skilled musician can employ. Even a skilled keyboard player cannot duplicate or effectively emulate a group of different instruments or an orchestra, because, at any one time, each key of a single keyboard controls tones having the same voice or timbre. That is, the player cannot produce totally different timbres of sound on keys played simultaneously on the same keyboard. As a result, he cannot hope to produce a truly orchestral effect.
Accordingly, it is a principal object of the present invention to enable a performer to create an accompaniment in a proper harmony and in a variety of different styles types of music, such as bossa nova, big band, baroque, jazz guitar, contemporary guitar and celli, country and western, hillbilly, bluegrass, rock and roll, etc. in which one or more of the instrumentation pattern, rhythm pattern, chord pattern pattern and melodic contour can be changed under performer control in order to add variety to the accompaniment.
Another object is to produce a musical instrument of the foregoing type in which one or more of the rhythm pattern, chord pattern pattern and melodic contour are changed in response to a change in harmony by the performer.
Yet another object is to provide an instrument of the foregoing type in which one or more of the instrumentation pattern, chord pattern pattern and melodic contour are changed in response to a change in musical style by the performer.
Still another object is to provide an instrument of the foregoing type in which the performer can use a keyboard in order to select the proper harmony for the accompaniment.
Still another object is to provide an instrument of the foregoing type in which mistakes in musical phrasing by the performer are corrected or minimized.
Yet another object is to provide an instrument of the foregoing type in which multiple voice lines are individually controlled in order to simulate the sound of a true orchestra.
An electronic musical instrument built according to this specification combines great ease of playing with an improved tone production system that faithfully reproduces the various instruments and rhythm patterns of an orchestra. The instrument automatically creates an accompaniment in the pitch range and rhythmic patterns that the experienced music arranger or orchestrator uses to define different styles of music. As a result, a performer of limited skill or musical knowledge can easily play a complete orchestral accompaniment in any one of a variety of musical styles. In order to achieve this result, the inventors have discovered new techniques for storing musical parameter information in a memory and processing that information according to the playing of the instrument by the performer.